Modem hospitals utilize medical images from a variety of imaging devices such as, for example, a Computer Tomography (CT) scanner or a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The image data are then stored and transmitted using a computer network—typically comprising client-server architecture—to enable medical professionals to view and diagnose the captured medical images at a workstation conveniently placed, for example, in a medical professional's office.
Hospitals and diagnostic clinics typically use PACS systems to import, store and manipulate image data. PACS systems are computer networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution, and representation of medical image data. PACS is offered by virtually all the major medical imaging equipment manufacturers, medical IT companies, as well as many independent software companies. Basic PACS software is freely available on the Internet.
In order to facilitate communication of medical image data and associated information the Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard has been developed and is now commonly used for image data communication between medical devices which include PACS systems.
While the DICOM communication standard has enabled robust, standardized communication between medical devices it was originally conceived for the exchange of two dimensional pictures. DICOM systems suffer from significant overhead for transferring individual images which presents performance challenges. With the increase in resolution as well as the increased application of 3 and 4 dimensional imaging in present day medical imaging devices, the size of image data files and their number contained within an individual imaging study has increased substantially and, as result, the slow transmission of image data using the DICOM communications protocols creates a bottleneck in present day PACS systems. Within a single medical device it is frequently the practice to use non-DICOM high performance communications and file transfer protocols for the internal movement of these large imaging studies.
It is desirable to provide a method and system that provides high performance data transfer between medical devices while preserving the benefit of information sharing using an existing communication standard.